CBS to show photos of Diana at crash scene
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-04-22 10:08

Never-before seen photos of Britain's Princess Diana at the scene of the Paris car crash in which she died are to be broadcast on U.S. television Wednesday night.

Britain's Princess Diana was killed in a high-speed car wreck in Paris in 1997.

CBS television said it obtained photos of the critically injured princess taken after the August 1997 fatal car crash along with information from a secret 4,000-page French report on the accident.

Publication of photos of the last hours of the much-loved princess have hitherto been considered off limits because of the nature of her injuries and out of respect for her two sons, princes William and Harry.

CBS said it would broadcast "photocopies of photos" from the French report on its "48 Hours Investigates" program Wednesday night and make public for the first time some of the details of the police report. CBS did not disclose how it obtained the French report.

Responding to a flurry of media calls, CBS defended its decision to use the pictures.

"These photocopies are placed in journalistic context -- an examination of the medical treatment given to Princess Diana just after the crash -- and are in no way graphic or exploitative," it said in a statement.

Diana's sudden death at the age of 37 in a high-speed car crash in Paris has been the subject of fevered speculation over the years.

The rumors have ranged from a report that she was pregnant at the time to conspiracy theories that she was murdered along with her lover, Dodi al Fayed, because their relationship was embarrassing to Britain's royal family.

A summary of the French inquiry, released in 1999, concluded that the crash was caused by Henri Paul, the couple's driver, who was drunk and speeding. Al Fayed and Paul were also killed in the crash.

"48 Hours Investigates" said information in the French report would dispel many of the claims and rumors surrounding her death.

U.S. television last month broke another taboo surrounding Princess Diana by airing never-before-heard audiotapes she recorded in the early 1990s that exposed the misery and turmoil of her marriage to Britain's future king, Prince Charles.

The tapes, broadcast in an NBC documentary, were the basis of Andrew Morton's explosive 1992 book, "Diana: Her True Story," that led to Charles and Diana's divorce in 1996.

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